Cooler Master Aquagate Mini Review

Cooler Master is introducing the Aquagate Mini in both 120mm and 80mm configurations. While water cooling CPU can be tedious at times with the associations of adding water, testing for leaks, finding the right pump location dealing with reservoir and bleeding. The new Aquagate Mini might well be the "Bic" of computer water cooling.

Installation

Installation :

A thorough read through of the manual is always a good idea no matter how many years of water cooling experience one may have under his/her belt. A key note to this simplified system is that it requires a couple of critical dimensions needed for proper placement and clearance of the radiator and pump/block relative to motherboard and case.

There is a minimum of 67 mm clearance from the rear of the case to CPU location, and 20 mm from bottom of power supply to top of the fan. This is because both the radiator and 120mm fan are mounted inside the case; the minimum space requirement becomes necessary.

There are five mounting plates - from left to right, S478, S775, K8, K7 and Xeon.

Motherboard back plate. This means motherboard removal is a must.

A word of caution - the screws to mount the water-block & pump plates are "counterclockwise".

Example - P4 Plate with screws mounted (by turning counterclockwise) or "left hand turn". Xeon owners are exempted from this step as the plate comes with another set of screws which are mounted directly onto the back plate.

At this point, I find the manual is quite insufficient. Although it lists 7 languages, it is by far close to detailing the installation process required. The photo illustrations are with very poor quality. However, installation process is what I enjoy the most, if only you could agree with me.

The next step is to install the plate onto the base of the water block.

But, which way does it go, it doesn't say.... Guess we will find out soon.

Here is the plate for K7 (AXP) on the left, and the pump/water-block and plate look.

Step 3 will be removing the motherboard and installing the motherboard back plate along with some grommets and vibration dampers. I ran a test on the pump before hand just to make sure everything is leak-proof, and at the same time I measured the pump noise and the Pump + fan noise together.

I had a Prescott S478 system in mind for the review based on the "famous" reputation Prescott generated in the heat department. Sadly to say the Chenbro Xpider II does not provide the needed clearance in mounting the radiator/fan no matter how I tried. The Xpider II 120 fan mounting bracket has taken the needed valuable real state; there is the lack of screw attachment holes for the 120x120 mm radiator and insufficient clearance from top of the fan to the power supply. Unfortunately, these are critical notes or requirements to look for before any installation attempts with the Mini R120.